Erykah Badu Baduizm

Included in Rolling Stone's "Essential Recordings of the 90's."
3.5 Stars (out of 5) - "...Badu is from the Diana Ross school of Billie Holiday imitation...mainly interested in just being herself....BADUIZM's strength lies in her ability to filter jazz vocals through hip-hop without any fuss or fanfare..."
Ranked #12 on Spin's list of the "Top 20 Albums Of The Year."
"...Badu's nouvelle-soul debut hits the target, blows it up, reinvents it. Sweetly cooing over Ron Carter's walking bass rhythms and the Roots' poetic wordplay, the singer echoes Lady Day--especially her phrasing and cadence..." - Rating: A
Included in Q Magazine's "50 Best Albums of 1997."
4 Stars (out of 5) - "...a warm thoroughly idiosyncratic record which mixes jazz, soul and a slice or two of hip hop into a rich, smoky musical brew..."
4 stars out of 5 - "File next to D'Angelo or OutKast's Badu-featuring HUMBLE MUMBLE, under loaded-soul perfection."
"...BADUIZM is rooted in an old vocab....[It] serves as a conduit for an awakening of something dark, familiar, and long slept....Badu...reaches for the joyful, exacting vocal arrangements of the Sweet Inspirations and the Emotions..."
"Erykah Badu redefines the word diva....She's replaced attitude with sass, and her sex appeal lies within her own private sensuality..."
Ranked #45 on Melody Maker's list of 1997's "Albums Of The Year."
"...What Erykah has accomplished is to set herself worlds apart from the universe of over-produced, honey-voiced, nothing-worthwhile-to-say fly girls..."
Village Voice (2/24/98) - Ranked #7 in the Village Voice's 1997 Pazz & Jop Critics' Poll.
Village Voice (2/18/97, pp.65-69) - "...sparklingly fresh....The last time a black woman came across in mainstream black pop as so nakedly her own creation and with so much creative control, her name was Sade..."
"...BADUIZM has a sophisticated running order, with reprises, lyrical motifs and a series of musical refrains. And refreshingly, this is probably the first rap-influenced record in which 'hoe' is a garden implement and not a term of disrespect."